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Definition of shantytown in US English:

shantytown

noun

A deprived area on the outskirts of a town consisting of large numbers of crude dwellings.

‘The effectiveness of this approach has a lot to do with the film's naturalistic casting, for many of the roles have been filled with real-life residents from the shanty town known as the ‘city of God.’’

‘The so-called port at Siem Reap is actually a huge shanty town where the jetty is literally collapsing into the water.’

‘The arts and social science faculties of Paris university had been moved to an overspill site on the former shanty town of Nanterre in 1964, and had grown from 4,000 to 15,000 students by the autumn of 1967.’

‘Sheltering behind another wall, he could look out into a clear area where the people of the shanty town were gathered.’

‘In my case this ‘dark corner’ is a shanty town inhabited by the ghosts of yesteryear, already categorised by my failed personal encounters.’

‘Far from doing himself any favours, however, his ineptitude kicks off a war between the Axe Gang and the inhabitants of Pig Sty Alley, a run-down shanty town that provides a surprising home to some kung-fu legends.’

‘The story follows a few months in the life of a poor man in an Arab shanty town.’

‘There is a vast difference between somebody living in a shanty town hoping for a small plot on which to erect a pondok and somebody who wants to become a full-time bona fide farmer.’

‘It's like one of Martin Parr's photographic nightmares, a neon shanty town of amusement arcades, chip shops and crumbling holiday camps that look like gulags.’

‘The first incidents broke out in March 1968 in Nanterre, a new university created in 1963 in the middle of a shanty town to the north-west of Paris in order to ease the pressure on the old Sorbonne.’

‘Life on the Tracks is a humorous and heart-rending film which focuses on family life in a Filipino shanty town built either side of a railway track.’

‘When we went filming out in the bush, we were filming in a slum called Kabira, which is just outside Nairobi, where there are a million people living in a shanty town with no running water, no electricity, no sanitation.’

‘The plane in which the Europeans arrive in San Theodoros is shown flying over an impoverished shanty town.’

‘The township is a sprawling shanty town and squatter camp hidden by the bush.’

‘I'd rather get within ten feet of someone who lives in township or a shanty town, because there are a great many of them.’

‘A housing scheme at the edge of Guanabara Bay outside Rio de Janeiro replaces a shanty town with architectural imagination and intelligence.’

‘They won't necessarily want to bring a T-shirt home from the Cape Flats, but Denis and his partner should visit Cape Town's infamous shanty town if they want to see what the city's really about.’

‘Our ‘shortcut’ led us into a shanty town, before we were chased back out of it by barking Alsatians.’

‘We rode through a stream, enjoyed a few final bursts of speed and skidding switchbacks and freewheeled into the shanty town of Yolosa.’

‘We drove through a Keralan-like shanty town, down roads green with palms and bananas and signposts pointing to ‘resorts’.’